reality war

the decoupling of the venn circles of consensus reality

minnesta governor tim walz is currently out describing the firing of jimmy kimmel as “north korea style stuff.”

leaving aside all the histrionics and stupidity and misframed misperception here, this is a truly dramatic volte face from the guy who so aggressively declaimed that

“there’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech”

to advocate censoring his opponents and detractors.

here are some receipts and a great take on the matter.

i diverge on one point here:

this is past “culture war” and into something altogether weirder and wilder.

this is a war for the actual nature of reality.

politicians like walz are making up facts, making up pretext, and making up history.

they and the media supporting them are creating an entirely false worldview to try and keep the last of their failing political faction together.

but each new lie puts more and more stress on the lies that came before and past a point, a false reality bubble bursts.

this is what is happening now.

the absurdity of it, the outlandish claims and impossible beleif requirements can no longer map to anything that looks like reality.

this is losing them the center in droves.

it has, in essence, eliminated the idea or even the possibility of “center.”

we were here:

and increasingly, we are now here:

so long as the venn overlap of “donkey story time” and “basic reality” was present, there was some ability to sustain the illusion, but as the two circles have separated utterly, it’s all falsity and projection.

and now you can truly say and perhaps even believe anything.

• “this is the end of democracy” because people are voting against me.

• consequences for the speech of our side are “fascism” and “totalitarian” but your side should be shunned, censored, or even jailed if they say things we brand hateful or even inconvenient.

that, my friends, is the real “north korea style stuff.”

my side may rampage, protected but unbound while yours must show its belly in submission, bound but not protected.

that’s not social contract, it’s subjugation.

you want to see the real “north korea style stuff”?

take a gander at this.

during the “fiery but mostly peaceful protests” that then began in minneapolis and spread across the nation, governor walz did nothing to stop the pillaging and burning.

the rioters were largely left to run riot.

i have some good friends who lived in the western suburbs of minneapolis at the time.

they were forced to evacuate their neighborhood because “we cannot keep you safe.”

this was obviously a lie. they absoultely could have kept them safe, the national guard was available, even active.

but look what they were doing.

yup, instead of reining in riots, they patrolled peaceful suburban neighborhoods with humvees and armed guardsmen demanding that peaceful people not so much as step outside their homes.

they literally fired upon people (with pepperball munitions, not lead) for the heinous crime of “standing on their own porch.”

now you tell me:

what was the “north korea style stuff” around here and who was orchestrating it upon whom and to what end?

this is small town america, people.

and this was not so long ago.

is this freedom? democracy? a rights based republic?

seriously, what are we going to call it when the governor sends the national guard to suppress peaceful people on their own front porches while leaving the nearby riots to burn, loot, and demolish?

and what are we going to call the kind of guy who did that and then goes on TV to talk about the death of democracy because an unfunny ratings-bomb talkshow host lost his job because he would not back off an obvious lie that upset ABC and its sponsors?

what are we to make of a man who presided over actual military attacks on peaceful people who simply wanted to stand outside on their own property while allowing mass violence in the city next door to run on unfettered when he describes others as authoritarian?

it’s a bridge too far.

this is just plain reality denial and projection.

it’s a cult telling its last followers that up is down and down is sideways while always accusing the other side of that which they are guilty.

the evidence that the FCC caused this firing as opposed to ABC making a business choice looks fairly flimsy and assumptive to me, but even if it were so, it’s hardly comparable to soldiers shooting at citizens who dared peek their heads out of their homes and hardly in keeping with walz’s own (admittedly false) assertions that hate speech and misinformation are not protected speech.

the current cry seems to be that “cancel culture is right wing.”

you seriously could not make this stuff up.

depiction of reality has become completely fluid and malleable.

it was not so very long ago that this same group cheered in glee at the removal (at government behest) of a sitting president from essentially all major social media platforms.

the lawfare and other attacks were orchestrated and unrelenting.

and somehow just now it’s all fogotten?

this was not isolated. support was widespread. kicking trump off social media had an 89% approval rate among democrats.

he was FAR from the only one.

heck, i remember them cheering for the decatforming of certain internet felines of questionable goodness for their “misinformation” on masks and lockdowns….

that was only 4 years ago.

quite an amazing lapse in memory…

these appeals to morality or law are purely tactical.

none of this team would ever live up to such standards.

they just adopt whatever pose is convenient.

it’s post-reality projection propaganda.

and the receipts are legion.

so spare me the “OMG, only nazis cancel talk show hosts with rock bottom ratings!” as if this were some new and unpreceedented extremis.

it’s pure “one rule for me and another for thee” practice.

and the utterly made up facts and claims used to underpin it have become a real danger. there is a not insignificant portion of america that is uncritically accepting this, inhabiting a full blown reality falsification bubble.

they are not bad or immoral or stupid people.

many are decent folks with decent minds making models of the world from manipulated data.

they trust in news that is not news but fiction.

they trust in leaders who do nothing apart from always accusing the other side of that which they are guilty.

perhaps i’m just being optimistic, but i think that a lot of them have no idea how badly, comprehensively, and consistently they have been lied to.

but i think a lot of them are starting to have suspicions.

and the more they question, the more the liars will have to tell ever greater whoppers to try to hold them in place and the more obvious the falsehoods will become.

this is how a whole worldview crumbles. once you see one lie, you start pulling threads and looking for others.

this is what is going to come to a head in america.

we’re experiencing a level of reality falsification not seen since stalin or mao.

it cannot be sustained nor can the self-indulgent asymmetry of their “punch no punchbacks, hit you in the face then accuse you of violence if you respond” praxis.

as the reality circles of the venn detach from one another and lose all overlap, the idea of a “middle” or “center” disappears.

there is no longer any such space.

final selections are being made for teams.

it is still my hope that with a big enough team rooted in reality, this need not go bad and can simply be a common consensus civilizational walk over or at least relatively minor scuffles as institutions change hands, but in the event that i am wrong about that, a thought:

you cannot play high trust civilized games with low trust uncivilized people.

and if you try, you will lose.

your own rules and mores will hamstring you and prevent you from response.

where there is no goodwill from others, reciprocal goodwill towards them is a vulnerability and when dealing with a tribe that sees vulnerability as opportunity, it will cost you dearly.

and past a point, there is no profit in refusing to recognize what the game is.